Moon-gazers Swoon Over Total Eclipse

December 10, 1992|By JANETTE RODRIGUES Daily Press

NEWPORT NEWS — The place was full of moon-watching lunatics.

As the moon moved through the Earth's shadow Wednesday evening, more than 300 men, women and children drank ``lunar punch,'' scarfed up Moon Pies and crooned songs like ``Bad Moon Rising'' at the Virginia Living Museum.

The guest of honor of the Luna-See party showed up briefly but at 6:07 p.m. disappeared completely for more than an hour.

No one was disappointed.

At 4:59, the moon began sliding into the Earth's shadow. At first, it looked like a red-tinged gray blemish on the lower left side of the sphere. By 6:07 p.m. the moon was completely darkened.

Usually, the moon remains visible as a coppery red orb. But ash from last year's eruption of Mount Pinatubo altered that.

Jon Bell, the museum's astrology director and ``chief lunatic,'' believes the eclipse was one for the record books.

``I've seen about a dozen, and that was the darkest one ever,'' said the 38-year-old astronomer, who has been watching the phenomena since he was a boy. ``I could not see where the moon was in the sky, and I knew exactly where to look for it.''

Ash spewed from the Philippines volcano had been expected to tone down the light refracted by the shadowed moon, but how much was a point of speculation.

Moon-gazers watched the eclipse in front of the museum, on a television screen inside the museum's planetarium theater and in a nearby field next to Deer Park School at the corner of J. Clyde Morris Boulevard and Jefferson Avenue.

The museum shuttled visitors to the Deer Park site so they could see first contact, the moment when the shadow takes the first bite out of the moon.

Trees around the museum prevented visitors from seeing first contact from the grounds, said Andrea Moran, museum spokeswoman.

Party-goers waited in lines sometimes 12 deep for a chance to see the partially shadowed moon through a telescope.

The next lunar eclipse will occur Nov. 28, and that will be the last until 1996.

Inside the museum the gift shop was doing a brisk business in ``outer space deely boppers'' -plastic hair bands with antennae that have silver moons and gold stars attached.

The Luna-See party included a children's workshop with a NASA specialist, face painting, moon rocks, mural painting, space suit try-on for kids, moon song sing-alongs with a local folk singer and plenty of green cheese and other ``lunar'' refreshments.

Marvelee Higgins stood beside a refreshment table watching her son try on a child-sized NASA space suit. A Girl Scout Cadette leader, she decided to forgo the troop's regular meeting so the girls could watch the eclipse.

She hopes the party and the eclipse will inspire the girls to ``look into science some more.''

``Science is not just chemicals and lots of memorizing. ... it's also fun,'' Higgins said.